The Political Whore

Revitalization is a constant theme in the projects nominated as part of the 2009 All-America City Awards conference coming to Tampa starting next Wednesday.

CL is providing the most in-depth coverage of the civic gathering because a) it’s important to reconnect people with their communities and b) the 30 communities involved in presenting their best public-private partnerships provide Tampa Bay civic activists a great opportunity to “steal” a few good ideas.

This interesting project is from a suburb of Des Moines about how school kids got involved to rehab their local park:

Windsor Heights, Iowa
Colby Park Playground

Colby Park is the larger of Windsor Heights’ two parks, and it is highly visible from an interstate that traverses the Des Moines metropolitan area. Aging and poorly planned, the park was in need of revitalization, and the City formed an ad hoc committee to create a comprehensive concept for the park.  The first, most pressing area was the playground. The Windsor Heights Foundation had set aside money for new playground equipment, and the City partnered with a local school to help design the playground area. As part of a school program that  offers ‘real world’ experiences to students, city staff worked with 6th and 7th graders to create a curriculum which would have them develop the architectural plan for the playground. The students created plans that included the recommended location of the equipment, the budget, and safety and accessibility factors. The students made presentations to the Windsor Heights Foundation, and the Foundation was so impressed with the students’ work that they increased the funding for the equipment by nearly 39% in order to achieve the optimal plan. The City Council also committed $100,000 to redeveloping the playground area. The playground was completed in the spring of 2007. The children learned valued life skills and can now play in the park they helped create.

Thirty cities, towns, neighborhoods and communities are vying for recognition as an All-America City at the June 16-19 conference at the Tampa Marriott Waterside Hotel. Each will give a short presentation on three public-private civic projects they undertook before a panel of judges names the best. Tampa is one of the finalists. CL and this blog will provide live tweeting and blog coverage from the presentations on Thursday and Friday morning.

Former Tampa Mayor Sandy Freedman is the president of the National Civic League this year and a big proponent of these kinds of partnership projects. During her tenure, in 1990, Tampa was named an All-America City. Creative Loafing CEO Ben Eason is also involved, as a member of the Host Committee.

Iowa becomes the fourth state in the nation and the first in the Midwest to allow same-sex marriages after that state’s Supreme Court struck down a ban against gay marriage.

The Des Moines Register reports:

Basic fairness and constitutional equal protection were the linchpins of Friday’s historic Iowa Supreme Court ruling that overturned a 10-year-old ban on same-sex marriage and puts Iowa squarely in the center of the nation’s debate over gay rights.

The unanimous, 69-page decision maintains a church’s right to decide who can be married under its roof, but it runs counter to the expressed opinion of a majority of Iowans who believe marriage is defined as the union of one man and one woman.

The landmark ruling is guaranteed to send shock waves through politics in Iowa and beyond. With no appeal as an option, opponents say their only hope to overturn Friday’s decision is an almost-certain bid to amend the state constitution. But that path, which would eventually require a public vote, would not yield results until 2012 at the earliest.

Already, political writers are saying this will be the impetus for gay marriage and a nationwide constitutional amendment against it as key issues in the 2012 presidential elections.

Daily Loaf blogger Lorna Bracewell adds her thoughts.

Download the ruling after the jump.
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I got by both Iowa Caucus watching parties last night, and here is my report, which will be in our print edition next week:

Sheila Cherizard (shown below) kept her eyes on the flat-panel television in north Tampa’s Hip Hop Soda Shop as Barack Obama gave one of the best speeches of his life, affirming the nation’s hunger for change as demonstrated by his victory in the Iowa caucuses.

Less than nine hours later, the 34-year-old medical school graduate on sabbatical from her hospital residency caught an 8:15 a.m. Southwest Airlines flight to Manchester, N.H., her first stop on a journey that ended in the Obama campaign field office in the capital city of Concord, where she volunteered for her candidate for the short five days before Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary.

The temperature in Concord by late morning was 7 degrees Fahrenheit.

So much for knocking on doors for votes. “The weather might be too harsh for any of that,” the daughter of Haitian immigrants conceded.

With Florida off-limits to Democratic candidates who pledged to stand by the national party’s decision to strip the state of its convention delegates as punishment for moving the state’s presidential primary to Jan. 29, Tampa Bay campaign volunteers find themselves needing to go north if they want to get into the action.

“If he can’t come here,” Cherizard said, “we’ll go to Barack.”

Last night was a joy for Tampa Bay Democrats, regardless of who their candidates were. Bitterly shut out of the White House for two terms of George W. Bush and feeling their oats since the 2006 midterm elections gave them control of Congress, local Democrats watched Iowans turn out in near-record numbers for the caucuses, excited about their top three candidates: Obama, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton.

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CL’s Alex Pickett is back in the frozen Midwest he called home for eight years to update us on the Iowa primaries. In his report yesterday, he wrote:

One thing that I have noticed is several younger people plan to caucus for the first time tomorrow. A Des Moines Register poll published this week makes the same point. And so far, Obama and Huckabee are leading in the Iowa polls.

Representative? Probably not. But there’s no denying this cold little state will set the tone for the next several weeks.

Read the full post at Blurbex.

Look, I have nothing against the Midwest; my wife is a Midwesterner, I love pork and all soy products, and I generally don’t mind my Gators taking on Big 10 teams. (Yesterday was an exception.) I have nothing against Iowa or Iowans; our own staff writer Alex Pickett lived there for a good while.

But let’s dial down the “dramatic narrative” of how important Iowa is as we prepare for the “exciting” and incomprehensible caucuses Thursday evening. First off, temps are expected to be down in the single digits there, so participation could be very low. Second, given the byzantine rules and processes of the caucuses, especially for the Democrats, the results are not representative of Iowa voters, let alone representative of the nation as a whole. Third, the folks who really determine who wins and loses generally are the legions of volunteers and paid staffers who flock to Iowa from every corner of the nation and who, for the most part, aren’t old enough to shave yet, as shown in this Richardson for President caucus training session photograph:

Now, the NYT has a much-needed story about how truly unfair and unrepresentative the caucuses in Iowa are:

Because the caucuses, held in the early evening, do not allow absentee voting, they tend to leave out nearly entire categories of voters: the infirm, soldiers on active duty, medical personnel who cannot leave their patients, parents who do not have baby sitters, restaurant employees on the dinner shift, and many others who work in retail, at gas stations and in other jobs that require evening duty.

As in years past, voters must present themselves in person, at a specified hour, and stay for as long as two. And if these caucuses are anything like prior ones, only a tiny percentage of Iowans will participate. In 2000, the last year in which both parties held caucuses, 59,000 Democrats and 87,000 Republicans voted, in a state with 2.9 million people. In 2004, when the Republicans did not caucus, 124,000 people turned out for the Democratic caucuses.

The rules are so demanding that even Ray Hoffman, chairman of the Iowa Republican Party and a resident of Sioux City, cannot caucus on Thursday night, because he has to be in Des Moines on party business.

So, let’s keep Iowa in perspective and eschew the media hype that is elevating it simply for the sake of a story narrative and ratings/sales. Whoever wins Iowa will have taken a first small step, one that may or may not be repeated in later states or on a national platform.